Opening Paragraph
The opening paragraph is a masterpiece of imagery which also subtly foreshadows much of that to come:
“I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantelpiece in the room across the hall. The clock once belonged to my great-grandmother (a woman called Alice) and its tired chime counts me into the world. I’m begun on the first stroke and finished on the last when my father rolls off my mother and is plunged into a dreamless sleep, thanks to the five pints of John Smith’s Best Bitter he has drunk in the Punch Bowl with his friends, Walter and Bernard Belling.”
The opening words are actually the triumphant “I exist” and the second sentence references Shakespeare while alluding to the novel Tristram Shandy. All pretty haughty company for what winds up being a tale of coming into this world that hardly seems worth the effort; the narrator with amazing dexterity gives her existence great significance while undercutting it as the consequence of an almost shameful origin. The imagery of the clock also initiates what will be a recurring motif on the subject of time.
Behind the Scenes at the Museum Garden
The narrator is given to short, effusively terse statements of fact. Such as the recollection—of a sort—of her first visit to the Museum Gardens. She’s there because her mother, Bunty, has read in childcare books that fresh air is important to babies. The imagery is every bit as vivid as the opening paragraph and—coming not all that many pages later—serves to enlighten the reader on her character through her baroque choice of language as well of that of her mother through the almost offhand description of Bunty’s personality quirks.
“My first day! All the trees in Museum Gardens are in new leaf and high above Bunty’s head the sky is solid blue; if she reached out her hand (which she won’t) she could touch it. Fluffy white clouds like lambs pile into each other. We are in quattrocento heaven. Swooping, tweeting birds dance excitedly above our heads, their tiny flight muscles at full throttle – miniature angels of the Annunciation, avian Gabriels, come to shout my arrival! Alleluia!”
Auntie Doreen
“Auntie” Doreen is one of those aunts who isn’t related, but is so-called because of a certain particular kind of close friendship. She is so-termed by the narrator’s father, George, who has…shall we say, particularly close kind of friendship with Doreen. The entire introduction of Doreen by George to his children is another example of exceptionally beautifully subtle usage of imagery by the author. Doreen is not really an aunt and not even really just a friend; the whole thing is illusion and that illusion is eventually going to be revealed and serve as more emotional gunpowder to a family already targeted. The narrator’s description of this first meeting uses imagery to perfectly underscore this detachment from reality:
“..speculation is rife as to what kind of person this ‘someone’ might be. We all have our preferences – Lucy-Vida would like Margot Fonteyn, I want Nana, the dog from Peter Pan, and Patricia wants Mary Poppins (a woman whom we long for, to take over our neglected upbringing). Gillian, typically, wants a Fairy Godmother to come and look after her and put the rest of us into an orphanage. We get none of these. We get Auntie Doreen.”
Cupboards
“Bunty’s settled in well in the maternity ward. The mothers all lie beached on their beds complaining all the time, mostly about their babies. We’re nearly all being bottle-fed, there’s an unspoken feeling that there’s something distasteful about breast-feeding. We’re fed on the dot, every four hours, nothing in between, no matter how much noise you make. In fact the more noise you make the more likely you are to be relegated to some cupboard somewhere. There are probably forgotten babies all over the place.”
The imagery of the maternity ward seems remarkable only its being unremarkable aside from being well-written. What the reader at this point doesn’t realize is the significance of the cupboard. Still very early in Chapter Two, this is already the fourth mention of a cupboard. From this point forward, there will be an addition twenty-five or so mentions of cupboards. Suffice to say that this traditional kitchen décor plays a significant role in the story, both literally and metaphorically. The imagery here is not about the maternity ward. It is completely about the cupboard.
